I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

We should love, not fall in love, because everything that falls, gets broken.

When you have crush you become nothing but a poet

By identifying that which is disrupting our current moment of bliss, so too can we then take the logical and practical steps to amend the problem.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

To get matured, you must have an education in the School of Solitude!

A knowledgeable and courageous U.S. president could help enormously in leading the world's nations toward saving the climate.

What to my Saviour shall I giveWho freely hath done this for me?I'll serve him here whilst I shall liveAnd Loue him to Eternity

I am one of those people who thrive on deadlines. Nothing brings on inspiration more readily than desperation.

They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. It's the same way with women... or at least the ones I want to be with.

I think we do need radicals. We need extremists, because that's how change happens.